


A form in wax by him imprinted

by purpleandgreen



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Domestic Violence, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-24
Updated: 2014-01-24
Packaged: 2018-01-09 22:00:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1151284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purpleandgreen/pseuds/purpleandgreen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce loses his first baby tooth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A form in wax by him imprinted

Robert Bruce Banner was exactly four and three quarter years old. The three quarters was very important. Out of one year split into four, which is comprised of exactly 3 months apiece, he was three of those fourths through the year to his next birthday, which in other words was 75% of the year towards being five, close to starting school!

He was sitting at the small desk that he favored at kindergarten filling in a book of math problems his mother had bought for him. His classmates might want to play with cars and soldiers and dreamt of being the next great football star or singer, Bruce (which is the name that he insisted on being called) just wanted to do math, FOREVER.

Bruce had no idea why he was being kept behind, or why his teacher was speaking to his mother at length in her office. He swung his legs and his tongue played with the wobbly baby tooth at the front of his mouth, when his mother and teacher emerged from the office.

“I’m most terribly sorry, again. Please send my most unreserved apologies to the other parents. I’ll see it doesn’t happen again. Bruce? Are you ready to go?”  
She kissed the top of his head and ushered him out of the room, throwing another couple of apologies over her shoulder as they left. 

Holding his hand tight, she walked stiffly out of the kindergarten grounds, Bruce finally noticing (he’d been trying to complete that last math problem in his head) that she hadn’t spoken to him yet. Rebecca always spoke to him on the way home from kindergarten, asked him about his day, and told him about hers.

“Momma?” Bruce enquired, “are you ok?” For the first time Bruce started to think that something might be up, piecing together the events of the last hour.  
Rebecca stopped suddenly, almost tripping Bruce up. She picked him up and hugged him fiercely. Pressing her face into Bruce’s dark brown curls that never could be tamed with a comb, she whispered, “Never change who you are, my beautiful boy.”

Bruce, confused, put his arms round his mother’s neck and didn’t complain when she carried him all the way home, though he knew he was far too old to be carried.

At home, Rebecca gave Bruce a cookie and a glass of apple juice, his favourites, and sat him down at the desk in his bedroom and watched him eat.

“Bruce,” She said at length, “Do you know why your teacher asked me to talk with her today?”

Bruce shook his head, trying to eat around all the chocolate chips so he could save them ‘til last, “Nope”

“Did you tell some of the other kids that Santa Claus doesn’t exist?”

By the way that Bruce’s legs stopped swinging under the table she knew that he had.

“Bruce?”

He set down his cookie and cup, apple juice still clinging to his top lip, his serious brown eyes running through the options of answers, before settling on honesty, “Yeah”

“Why did you do something so mean?”

“Momma” suddenly his face was so serious, so adult, that she had to stifle a smile. “I don’t tell lies. Chloe told Ben that Santa Claus wouldn’t give him any presents if he didn’t give her his sweets, so I told Ben and the others not to worry because his parents bought his presents and Santa Claus was a fairy story told to children to get them to behave.”

“And when did you work that one out?” 

“Oh, ages ago…”

“Bruce” Rebecca took hold of his hand, “Bruce, sometimes adults tell lies in order to keep the peace, or to make something magical. Sometimes there are good lies and sometimes there are bad lies. You wouldn’t tell me that I looked ugly in a dress if you knew it was going to hurt my feelings, would you?”

Bruce frowned, his brain working through the problem as he did with his math, tongue characteristically sticking out, “But, I thought it was wrong to lie… if a dress made you look bad then I would tell you.”

“Even if you knew it would make me sad? I wore a terrible dress for my first date with your father. I looked awful in it, but he always said I looked beautiful, even though I didn’t.” She smiled sadly.

“Because he loves you?”

“Yes, Bruce, he loves me, and he loves you too”

Bruce looked at the floor, “Yes, Momma”

The front door slammed and a rough voice shouted “Rebecca!”

Brian.

He’d been drinking again, she knew even before she saw him. She knew by that one word that he’d had a bad day in the lab and had ended up in a bar, where he’d drunk as much as he could before being thrown out, and it wasn’t even 4.30 in the afternoon.

He lurched in to the kitchen downstairs, and it wasn’t long before she heard the inevitable smash of crockery.

When Rebecca had met Brian those 7 years ago, he had been a promising scientist, working at the forefront of nuclear technology. She knew he liked a drink, but he never let it interfere with his work, or his love for her. 

She also knew he’d had a breakdown. At college he’d cracked under the strain of being the youngest person at MIT, and been in a mental institution for nearly a year, before making an apparent full recovery. 

At first she’d been so happy. They married and bought a house in the suburbs. Brian was happy in his work and all was going well. The days seemed full of summer and promise. She hardly noticed that his drinking was becoming progressively worse. He would get snappy if there wasn’t alcohol readily on hand in the house. She stocked the drinks cabinet regularly, but it often emptied within a couple of days. 

Worse, his work changed. Brian was working on an exciting project concerning gamma radiation. He’d enthused about it in the beginning, telling Rebecca how he could change the face of modern warfare with the work he was doing. He became arrogant, over confident.

The day she told him she was pregnant, he had blanched. The child would be a monster he believed, infected with the radiation that he was working with, a mutant perhaps. He’d backed away in horror and told her to get rid of it. She refused and Brian had gone on a drinking binge that lasted for a week, only coming home when he ran out of money. That was the day he first hit her. 

He’d staggered in the front door, unwashed, reeking of whisky, and tried to take her forcefully to the clinic, where he said, she must, “get rid of the monster.”  
Fortunately he was too drunk to drag her out of the house, but not before he’d blacked one of her eyes. Rebecca didn’t know which hurt most, the fact that he had hit her or the humiliation. She had locked herself in the bathroom while he collapsed in the kitchen. The next morning he refused to meet her eye, but he didn’t apologise either.

She had carried the pregnancy to full term, giving birth to Robert Bruce alone in the local hospital. Brian was at a bar. The moment Rebecca looked into the soft brown eyes of her beautiful baby boy; she knew that she would die to protect him. 

“What’s going on here? Why were you late home?”

It was Brian, worse for wear again, and lurching toward Rebecca. “Half an hour late, saw you bringing the brat in, where’ve you been?”

“Nowhere, we…” She paused, not wanting to explain about Bruce’s ‘freakish’ behaviour causing trouble, “We had car trouble.”

Bruce frowned and said loudly, “Is that a good lie or a bad lie?” 

Time stopped. Bruce realised he had said something awfully, terribly wrong.

Rebecca groaned inwardly and steeled herself for the slap, the temper, the hours of berating that would inevitably follow until Brian tired himself out and fell asleep. “Bruce?” She said as calmly as possible, “Please go to your room.”

Bruce’s face fell. Rebecca thought her heart would break as the realisation of what he’d caused sunk in. Bruce had heard Brian and Rebecca’s rows, listened to them almost every night from his bedroom, but had never witnessed the abuse. He started to back away, “Momma, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” 

“Shut up you little shit.” Snarled Brian, “You been training him to cover for you, you bitch?”

The blow, though not unexpected, was harder than she was used to and the pain was worse as she saw Bruce’s reaction…

Bruce, his mouth open in an O of surprise and shock had backed away so rapidly he nearly fell over, but suddenly another emotion had overtaken him, and his brows bowed into a frown and his mouth twisted down in a furious tantrum. He sprinted over to Brian, barrelling into him with an incomprehensible scream of fury, flailing at his father with his small fists. 

Brian, taken by surprise, toppled over onto his side, but soon recovered and picked Bruce up by his wrists, flung him onto his bed.

“You little bastard” Brian snarled, “You little freak, you’re not my son, you’re a piece of worthless shit, you hear me?”

“Yes sir” stammered Bruce.

“I don’t want to do this” Brian rounded on his young son, “But you make me, you bastard, you make me!”

He slapped Bruce across the face with the back of his hand, hurling the child across the room with the force of the blow. Brian spun on his heel and left the room so abruptly he didn’t see the blood pouring down his son’s face.

When she checked on him, once Brian’s temper had run its course, and he’d locked himself in his office, Bruce was still sitting in the corner of his bedroom, knees up to his face, trembling. His fingernails had dug so deeply into his knees he’d drawn little crescents of blood on his skin.

He lifted his face and Rebecca saw the blood on his chin, all over his clothes and in his hair.

“Oh Bruce” She gasped.

“I hate him.” He’d said calmly.

“Bruce…” Rebecca began gently, “You can’t hate your own Father.”

He turned to her, his gentle brown eyes hardened into resolve, “I can. I hate him”.

He held out his hand to Rebecca, still shaking, and opened his small child’s fist. Lying in his hand was his baby tooth that had been wobbling for days, knocked out of his mouth by his father.

And all Rebecca could do was hold him, as the tears finally started.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry, there's horribleness in this. I'm amazed that Bruce is as together as he is, considering his past. This is my 3rd Bruce story, and my 3rd story ever. All feedback is appreciated. :)


End file.
